In the construction of oil wells, it is customary to place a string made up of lengths of slotted well screens in the producing regions of the well to collect the oil while screening out sand or other particulate matter from the strata being produced. Typically, the wells are quite deep and the well pipe is of a relatively large diameter, such as 41/2"--95/8". The tremendous weight involved generally makes it necessary that the well screens used by very strong, necessitating the use of well pipe as a central support core. The lengths of pipe, usually 20', are threaded on each end so they can be joined by threaded couplings. An intermediate section of each length is perforated and surrounded by a screen jacket which usually comprises a series of longitudinal stainless steel rods which have a stainless steel wire helically wrapped around them and welded to them so as to form a continuous helical slot. Rings at the ends of the wrapped wire are then welded or otherwise attached to unperforated or blank sections of the pipe adjacent the perforated section. Such a screen is termed a "pipe base" screen and generally has about a 12" blank pipe section at each end between the screen jacket and pipe end threads to accommodate the tongs used on a drilling rig to screw pipe segments together. The extended region of blank pipe is necessary since the tongs have a height in the axial direction of the pipe of about 6-10" and since some additional blank area is needed to prevent destruction of the relatively fragile screen jacket by inadvertent contact with the tongs. The requirement for about 24" of blank pipe of each 20' length of pipe plus about another 10" for the couplings means there is about 34" out of every 20' not available for oil production. For example, in a typical installation of 240' of pipe base screen in a production zone in an oil well, there would be twelve 20' lengths of screen in the string and eleven connections. Multiplying 34" of blank pipe length per length by eleven gives a product of 374" or 31' of length which cannot produce. In view of this substantial loss of production area, it would seem highly desirable to be able to reduce the length of blank pipe while simultaneously increasing the length of the screen jacket. For example, if each of the blank pipe regions in the aforementioned example could be reduced from 12" to 4", there would be about a 24% reduction in lost production length from 374" to 286". Furthermore, the reduction in blank pipe area would permit more total oil to be produced from the formation.